The Art of Cosplay Explored · 12:50am Apr 23rd, 2015
CALGARY – At last week’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, cosplayers were questioned about the art of cosplay and the relationship it holds with fandoms. With almost exact answers, we see that the reasoning behind said answers differs much more than one would believe.
With use of the Oxford Dictionary’s definitions of fandom and cosplay, all survey takers agreed with the definition for fandom, however, they became divided by how the Oxford Dictionary defined cosplay.
Splitting into two sides, one being cosplays originating or related to manga and anime, while the other being cosplays not related to those Japanese genres, cosplayers either agreed or disagreed with the definitions use of the words, “especially ones of the Japanese genres of manga and anime.” Aside from this problem, cosplayers saw no problem with the Oxford Dictionary’s definitions of the two terms.
Cosplayers also generally agreed that mash-up characters – such as one Samurai Pikachu who wondered around the convention – and original characters counted as cosplays, and as some of them put it, “As long as you can figure out what it is, then yes, it is cosplay.” As well, all cosplayers interviewed agreed with the concept that cosplay can be defined as a form of art. Both aspects of these questions missing from the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of cosplay, to which they overall agreed to.
Along with this unanimous agreement of cosplay being a form of art, all cosplayers who partook in the survey agreed in disagreement that any individual has to be a part of a fandom the character they wish or are cosplaying pertains to. However, their reasoning behind said disagreement differs amongst each of them.
One person, a man dressed as a Team Magma Grunt, from the famous series of Pokémon stated that, “… if they’re not (a part of the fandom), it just seems that they’re looking for attention by dressing up as a popular character.”
Similarly, another person, dressed as Peter Davison’s incarnation of the Doctor from Doctor Who, said that people not part of the fandom the character they are cosplaying is from are similar to “posers.”
Others, such as one man dressed as Captain Hammer from Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, believed that, “No, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, anyone who can cosplay needs to know how to do it well.” Further stating that, “You can’t just say, ‘I want to do that, that looks nice,’ you have to know enough about how to cosplay.”
Two more cosplayers, one dressed as Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, and the other as Lucy from the anime Fairy Tail, answered saying, “You put more effort into it if you’re a fan of it,” and that, “It’s all for fun… why should we exclude people? It’s not fair.”
Regardless of the reasoning, cosplayers seem to be united behind a certain set of views - though with differing reasons - and the relation between cosplay and fandoms appears not as dependent upon one another as it originally seemed. The two appearing more independent in fact, and cosplay’s role within fandoms differing upon the cosplayer spoken to.
The link to the picture at the beginning is to the picture that was supposed to go with the blog, but no matter what I did with this, the image was always magnified to a gross amount that you'd have to zoom out to see it. So I just gave up trying and linked the image to the article.
Also, due to the sheer lack of time I've had with this, this may not be my best article, and if you see any mistakes or want to give any criticism, please go right ahead.